


Plot Twist

by MeridianGrimm



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character study of the Spiral, Crack Treated Seriously, Fix-It, Gen, Some Humor, The Spiral collects Michaels to confuse and annoy everyone, There are some s2 tweaks but this is an s3 fix it, This Grew A Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-26 20:34:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20395756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MeridianGrimm/pseuds/MeridianGrimm
Summary: Mike Crew is bound to two Powers, Mikaele Salesa isn’t dead, and Michael Keay is 117 years old. Michael Shelley is slowly starting to untangle his sense of self from the Distortion.Or, the Spiral has been playing a prank on Beholding for twenty years.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based on a [post](https://meridiangrimm.tumblr.com/post/187175535018/meridiangrimm-if-mike-crew-hadnt-gone-vast) I made about the Spiral. It’s weird and it may or may not be believable, but I had fun writing it. I also might have anthropomorphized an eldritch horror a little but I regret nothing.
> 
> If any of the tweaks I made to canon are not clear enough in the fic, you can see the end notes.
> 
> I am posting this from my phone, so I may make minor edits when I get home.

**June 2017**

Jon can’t believe his eyes, which is appropriate given his current company. “Michael? But you were dead – _ twice_.”

The Spiral turns to something unseen on the other side of its yellow door and murmurs to it before stepping into the Hunters’ cabin. The door swings closed with a creak. When the entity turns its attention on Jon and Gerry, it looks only mildly curious. “What an interesting claim. I don’t feel dead.”

“I watched it. Daisy showed up at your house before I could collect your statement. She – you were buried.” Jon would prefer to avoid mentioning his part in that, however unwilling. “And then later with the door, it wouldn’t open for me, but you screamed as it closed behind you. Helen Richardson said you were dead.” She’d also said that trying to pry a statement from a fundamentally dishonest being was a fool’s errand.

Michael smiles and its teeth are sharper than any human-shaped creature ought to have. It’s not the tall blond today or the short figure with Lichtenberg scars, but a broad redhead whose face looks familiar for reasons Jon can’t put his finger on. “The Twisting Deceit says many things, Archivist. I am sure it looked quite convincing, but, ah, trusting your senses around me or mine is always unwise.”

That’s a fair point, but doesn’t answer the more urgent question. “If – if you’re alive, then what are you doing here? Hoping the third time’s the charm?”

“Oh, no. I just came to help.” With that ominous declaration, Michael sits down primly in the armchair and reaches for a modeling tool that wasn’t there before. It grips the huge, human-sized lump of clay on the low table (which, where did _ that _come from?) and starts to sculpt a rounded shape at the top.

Gerry has been quiet until now, but he narrows his eyes suspiciously at Michael. “What exactly are you planning to do? And what will it cost us?”

Its smile is softer this time, and that terrifies Jon. “This price isn’t either of yours to pay.” It turns back to its piece, the top of which now looks disturbingly like a head. “I’ve fed Terminus many times. She can spare a single life in trade.”

Jon’s eyebrows shoot up. “So you don’t want to kill me anymore?”

“Who said it was your life I’m sparing, Archivist?” Michael finishes the head, which looks much like its own head except for the longer hair. It reaches out again and two clay arms emerge from where it’s shaping the block, and then after that it forms two legs.

“I don’t understand.”

It laughs like a knife scraping on metal. “You aren’t meant to.” Jon doesn’t remember Michael shaping the torso, but suddenly the Spiral is adding faint lines for ribs and collarbones and smoothing out the clay over the figure’s stomach. It works with unnatural speed.

Gerry stands up as Michael starts the more detailed work on the face. “Do you mean me, then?” he asks. “I’m already dead. You can’t bring me back.”

Michael makes a dismissive gesture at the End book laid out on the table, with Gerry’s ripped-out page sitting on top. “Your rotting flesh is of no interest to me.” The clay face before them bears a striking similarity to Michael’s, but more importantly, the face and figure look _ exactly _like Gerry, down to every freckle and tattoo. “The Spiral lies to reality. Nothing will be able to tell this body apart from the one you grew yourself.”

“What do you gain from this? Why would you help me?” Gerry demands.

The Twisting Deceit doesn’t answer. It folds up Gerry’s page and places it on the clay shell’s tongue, and then Gerry is standing on the table in its place, as solid and real as any living thing. “I will never understand why humans are so picky about their number and arrangement of limbs, but I suppose this vessel is sufficient.” Without another word, it disappears back through the door, leaving behind two hopelessly confused agents of Beholding.

Jon finally breaks the silence. “Are – are we going to address the fact that the Spiral sometimes looks a bit like you?”

* * *

**May 1926**

When the Spiral had absorbed Michael Keay, he was the only Michael it’d owned at the moment. The occasion had been satisfying, as taking avatars usually was. Keay had been a businessman with hobbies that included painting, woodcarving, and illustration. He feared the passage of time with a deep ferocity known only to those whose days were numbered. The Spiral had offered him a new outlet, sculpture, and told him that he could deceive time itself if he became a Worker in Clay. He could lie to the universe and escape the sickness that trailed his every step. Keay hadn’t hesitated to accept.

Time is a tricky thing, though. It’s hard to keep track of when you’re creating impossible forms and unspooling the sanity of unsuspecting humans and delighting in horrors beyond comprehension. When Keay remembered the life that he’d had before shedding his corporeal limitations, time had gone slippery and his daughter now had a child of her own. Little Mary, the second of her name, was knee-deep in powerful books, and Keay had retained enough of himself to feel pride that she too wanted to outwit the End. Mary had been unafraid of the Spiral and so Keay had left her to her work undisturbed. When her son had died young on a quest for the Eye, however, Keay decided that he wasn’t too lost in his god to indulge in sentiment.

* * *

**October 2016**

Jon’s headache has been brewing all morning and when Tim walks in with yet another statement, he knows his day is about to get worse. “Another sighting?”

“Got it in one. I found this statement from 2006 in a pile of 1998 files.”

“Does this Michael creature _ never sleep? _”

Tim smiles, but it’s not nice. “Could say the same thing about you, boss.” Although they’re both still tense, this is the most amicable they’ve been since Prentiss and the tunnels. Jon’s paranoia has been damaging his work relationships – he knows, alright? – but making a project out of investigating Michael has kept the Archives from becoming openly hostile. Martin had been the one to suggest it, since the monster had singled out Sasha and Jon on separate occasions and could apparently enter the Archives whenever it wanted. And none of them knew _ what _it wanted. In the spirit of preparedness (and teamwork, according to Martin), they’ve all been looking into statements about Michael. For Jon, the investigation serves as a much-needed break between leads on Gertrude’s death. “What did they say it looked like this time?”

“The victim said it had clear blue eyes, dark hair, and branching scars on his neck. He thought the monster did something to his brother, Grant Walker.”

Jon recalls the other statements and his own encounters with the entity. “We’ve heard that one before. With the bookseller it went by Michael Crew, or Mike.” He notes that this description does _ not _match the one it had worn when it took Helen Richardson from his office and stabbed him two weeks ago. “Maybe it changes appearance based on its mood?”

Tim shrugs. “Who knows? You might want to record this one, though. Stephen Walker’s brother had some kind of detailed hallucination on the Tour Montparnasse and climbed over the railing, apparently under his own power. He fell from the edge while claiming he was in a wide open plain, although Stephen says he never hit the ground. The scarred man watched Grant the whole time with no reaction other than boredom.”

“Christ. Alright, I’ll take a look at that one. Add it to the disgustingly tall pile of files about this – this _ Distortion _ that can apparently _ change appearance _as needed.”

* * *

**July 1990 || December 1998**

The Spiral had claimed Mike Crew next. The boy had been tracing his branching scars in the middle of a storm and the Spiral had soaked up the sound of his pounding heartbeat and his short, terrified breaths. The boy was called Michael, like one of its avatars, and wasn’t that funny? Humans are so stubborn about names, insisting that they have some inherent tie to a person’s self when the truth is that names aren’t real. Humans long to endlessly label and categorize their world, and a name is just another box that exists only inside the mind.

Wouldn’t it be delightful to deceive humans with the very categories that they cling to so stubbornly? If the Spiral took two avatars of the same name, with different spheres of power, then no one would ever untangle which limb could do what or how many there were. It would be a masterful misdirection for the Twisting Deceit. The Spiral has been wanting to put the Eye in its place for some time, anyway. Who are they to divine the truth among lies, to attempt to know It Is Not What It Is? The Watcher sits smugly in his temple while his wild Archivist ruins rituals as she pleases. It would drive Beholding mad to try and understand the Spiral if their little institute took statements about different limbs and thought they were all the same. The Eye would know _something_ was wrong, but not what, and that is exactly what the Twisting Deceit desires.

The Spiral has no face of its own, but somewhere across the city that night, Michael Keay had laughed like static as the rain poured down in sheets and lightning lit the skies.

The Twisting Deceit had watched Crew grow and had encouraged his terror. It fed on him like any other of its victims. The Spiral made Crew determined and strong, showed him that fear could be powerful when wielded with intention, and let him loose on the world to learn about the Entities he would face as a Liar. The problem was that Crew hadn’t realized he was being taught. He had thought that the sky would be his salvation instead. When he was grown enough (_scared _ enough) to become a Liar, Crew threw himself to the Vast to ensure his own safety. The Spiral _did not_ like that.

For his part, Crew couldn’t remember what kind of arcane agreements the Vast and Spiral had come to for him. However, the end result of his leap from the bell tower was that he was, in effect, shared between two unfathomable Fears. At first, he had railed against becoming the force which had haunted him for so long, but the other Michael, whose form wavered like a desert mirage, had said that Crew would be the hunter rather than the prey. Once he fed his patrons, he would never need to fear anything ever again.

Between the Fairchilds and Keay, Crew had honed himself into a balance of the Endless Wide and Bent Perceptions. He wreaked havoc with hallucinations and vertigo, and split his time between dropping people from heights and confusing their senses until jumping off seemed like the only way the world would reorder itself again. Crew was a monster twofold, but when he wasn’t feeding his gods, it wasn’t really so bad.

* * *

**February 2017**

“Do demons exist, Mr. Sims?”

Jon doesn’t recognize the woman in the door to his office, but he glances down at his appointment calendar and spots a name for 2:30 today. “Ms. Briggs, are you here to give a statement?”

Suzanne Briggs enters his office, but doesn’t take the open chair. “I’m not sure you’ll believe me. You get plenty of tall tales and superstition here, I’m sure, but what I saw was real. It wasn’t a trick of the light, I wasn’t asleep, and I was stone-cold sober the whole time.”

Her suspicion and hostility aren’t unusual, so despite his irritation, Jon manages to keep a professional air. “The Magnus Institute is here for anyone to give a statement. We’re not going to turn you away.” He clicks the tape recorder on. “What brought you here today?”

“One of my colleagues was turned into a demon. I’m an antiquities dealer – don’t look at me like that, this isn’t some stunt to sell a haunted desk – and I’ve seen a lot of weird shit. This was different, though. We’re not a large community nowadays and those of us who have dealt in old valuables long enough have probably marketed a few goods to rich clients as ‘supernatural’ to increase the sale value. At a networking event recently, I met a buyer looking for something paranormal, so I contacted a – a supplier that tends to know about who’s selling this month’s creepy artefact.”

Jon can see where this is going. It’s been a while since Mikaele Salesa showed up on the peripheries of a statement. “And what did you buy from him?”

“Nothing. I’ve met him before, you understand, and while he was always shifty, he still seemed like a normal person. Last week, though, I met with him at his warehouse and I saw something.” Briggs nervously picks at a thread in her sweater. “We were passing this huge glass globe that was out of its crate and I saw our reflections in it as we went by. My reflection looked how I expected, still basically the same with distorted proportions, but my colleague was – he was _ wrong._ He didn’t look human anymore. The thing in the glass was taller and wider than him, and its limbs looked like someone had stretched them out like taffy. It was wavy, almost. Not quite all there.”

“Are you telling me that you think _ Mikaele Salesa _ is the Distor– a demon?”

Her gaze snaps to Jon. “You know him?”

“Only by reputation. Tell me more about what you saw.”

* * *

**September 2008 || April 2014**

The Spiral had marked Mikaele Salesa in 2008, but was too busy with preparations for the Great Twisting to bother collecting him then. After the ritual, it could come back for him easily and slip him on like a glove. Salesa had been touched by most of the Fears by the time the Spiral took notice of him. He had agreed to transport an item bound to the Twisting Deceit and he’d handled it with a healthy level of fear and caution. Salesa had believed the museum director when she spoke about the ancient, spiraling seashell that had been buried in their collection for hundreds of years. An intern in the curation department had held the shell to her ear and went mad shortly thereafter, and Salesa knew that it hadn’t been the sounds of the ocean that she’d heard from inside it.

Several years passed before the Spiral came back for Salesa. Although it had lured Keay, bargained for Crew, and was gifted with Shelley, the Spiral took Salesa without subterfuge or pretense. It watched him celebrate his “last job” with the ship’s crew and take his merchandise to the meeting point, and when everything went wrong, the Spiral had opened a path for him. Salesa, too frightened to pay attention, had rushed through headfirst without checking that this particular door had been there before the trade. He wasn’t as compatible at first as some of the Spiral’s other limbs, but Salesa knew plenty about lying and he turned his new position to his advantage. With the Spiral’s skillset, retirement had seemed less necessary than before.

* * *

**July 2017**

The only one who isn’t feeling the tension in the Archive’s conference room is Gerry. Well, unless he’s just pretending not to notice it as he paints his nails and ignores everyone around him. At the other end of the table from Jon, Tim crosses his arms. “You’re honestly, seriously trying to convince us that _ Michael_, who locked two of us in his corridors while Sasha’s killer chased you around the tunnels, just – just built a body out of the goodness of its heart for Gerard Keay, who was dead? And now he’s fine?”

“Look,” Jon says, “I know it doesn’t make sense.”

“I’ll say,” Basira mutters, and Melanie snorts. Neither of them have met Michael, but they’d joined the Archive’s weekly Michael meeting anyway, probably out of curiosity or boredom. Martin doesn’t look particularly convinced either, though.

There’s a knock at the door. Jon, who’s expecting Daisy back from Elias’ latest assignment, unthinkingly says, “Come in.”

He recognizes the creaking hinges instantly and realizes that the wrong door is swinging open behind him. Jon whips his head around. “Michael?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Tim says. “Guess we don’t need to worry about the Stranger killing us all, then. We won’t even make it to the Unknowing.”

“The Unknowing is why I’m here,” Michael announces, gliding into the empty seat beside Jon without waiting for an invitation. It sweeps its straw-colored hair out of its face and laces its too-long fingers on the table, looking as innocent as a monster can manage. Jon suddenly notices that the Distortion has folded its body like it’s made of paper rather than flesh and bone, and he swallows a scream at the impossible contortions. “The Eye plans to stop the Circus, and I have an interest in making sure that you follow through. You might say that I come in peace?”

Basira, who’d jumped to her feet at Michael’s entrance and still has a hand on her gun, doesn’t relax at its declaration. “Why should we believe that the Stranger and the Spiral aren’t in it together? Doesn’t ‘unfamiliarity’ go hand in hand with ‘having your senses lie to you’?”

Michael stares at her for a long time, its head cocked at an unnatural angle. “No,” it finally answers. “It Is Not What It Is will remain neutral for now.”

“Is that because your own ritual failed?”

For a moment, its form wavers, but it answers in a calm, measured tone. “I am not here to discuss your former Archivist’s machinations. I… do not want to.” It sounds almost surprised about the last part, like wanting something on its own is a novelty. It repeats itself with more confidence: “Yes, I do not want to talk about that. I have decided.”

Jon’s question is out of his mouth before he can think better of it. “Did you steal her assistant’s shape?” he asks. “I heard your voice on one of her tapes.” He hadn’t gotten the chance to inquire before when Michael popped by the Hunters’ cabin in America to craft a body for Gerry. “At first, I thought you might _ be _him, but we’ve looked through the Archives and there are statements about a monster named Michael from before she recorded that tape in 2007. And the other aliases you’ve used, like Crew and Salesa – did you take their appearances too, or did you make them from scratch? Is there a limit to the number you can have, or is it just part of being the Spiral? It doesn’t – it just doesn’t seem right.”

For some reason, the Distortion seems genuinely cheered by Jon’s questions, which is alarming. Its giggle is a horrible, grating sound. “You really don’t know? None of you have guessed? Ah, the Eye collects puzzle pieces, but it does not recognize the finished picture.” It sits back in its chair. “I will not feed the Eye to satisfy your curiosity, Archivist. I am only here to orchestrate the Stranger’s failure.”

* * *

**January 2010**

Becoming Michael Shelley was so viciously bittersweet that the Spiral almost suspected Gertrude Robinson of knowing about its trick on Beholding. She didn’t, but that didn’t make it hurt less when the Great Twisting was wrenched from its grasp and shattered to pieces on an island that did not and could not exist. One woman’s meddling had destroyed its transcendence in a single blow, and all that was left in the rubble of Sannikov Land was Shelley, a monster that the Archivist had fashioned herself.

Shelley had trusted Gertrude so completely that even when he’d realized with a sour tug in his gut that he was being fed to the very Power they had travelled so far to stop, he hadn’t turned back. He’d had a map of the maze and he could have run fast enough and far enough that the Spiral, wrapped up in its ritual, wouldn’t have even noticed he was there. Shelley walked his last steps as a mortal creature knowing exactly what was happening. When he twisted himself into the corkscrew at its center that wasn’t there, he hadn’t even cried. If Gertrude thought that this was the only way to end the ritual, then Shelley would give up his entire sense of self to save the world.

Sacrificing himself hadn’t quite worked out like he’d thought, though. Shelley _ had _ stopped the Great Twisting as intended, but his consciousness hadn’t vanished. He had grown up on stories of monsters and had read statement upon statement in the Archives about the horrors that walked the earth. Monsters preyed on humans without exception. When the world was saved and he was _ still there_, when his very self hadn’t dissolved in the onslaught, he was left with fear and anger and hunger and despair. Trying to cut away everything that made him Michael Shelley had been a conscious decision. He’d decided that becoming a blank, empty limb, a single part subsumed by the whole, was preferable to existing as a full, thinking creature that was complicit in the Spiral’s terror.

The Spiral had allowed that for a while, grieving at it was for the loss of many avatars and the failure of its Great Twisting. When it had recovered and started to feed again, though, it reached for Shelley. This Michael had not been ensnared with the pleasure that Keay had prompted or the glee that Crew had inspired at the beginning of its lie to Beholding. Nevertheless, Shelley now belonged to the Spiral and he was another Michael for its collection. It loosened its grip on him, just a little, in case Shelley ever wanted to crawl out of its depths and cause some chaos for the Eye. When Shelley had started to show curiosity towards the Archivist’s successor, the Twisting Deceit gladly let him pursue his new distraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to be very clear that Michael Shelley made a choice. I have seen him described as weak in comparison to Helen because she maintained some of her personality as a Distortion, but I feel strongly that Michael Shelley, who survived the Archives for years and saved the world, was not weak.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t listen to the end of s3 again while writing this action-filled chapter, so don’t worry too much about whether events line up. I’ve diverged enough from canon that things go differently.

**August 2017**

While the Archivist’s company make their statements the night before the Unknowing, four Spirals confer in Shelley’s halls. “How many of our limbs should we send?” Keay asks. “Confusing the Eye’s perception of us has been entertaining, but sending only one will limit us. The Circus cannot be allowed to succeed.”

Shelley hums and the corridors buzz around them. “During the dance, the Eyes will be unable to understand what is happening around them. Their minds are not as flexible as ours. If the Eyes cannot know us, then we can send four and still continue our deception.”

Salesa clears its throat. It’s an unnecessary affectation, but the man it used to be holds onto a few human social cues. “I understand the stakes, but this type of combat has never been my specialty,” Salesa points out. “One-on-one wouldn’t be a problem, but this is war.”

Keay nods. “You are still new to the Spiral. You may stay behind, like Helen. She is learning how to be us.”

“Good. If Shelley can open a door, though, I know where we can borrow an old fishing spear that belongs to the Hunt. Its owners won’t miss it for one night.”

“The Watcher’s pet Hunter will tear through the Circus like tissue paper,” Crew muses.

Shelley rubs its warped, clawed hands together. “It is decided, then.”

* * *

Although the Eye’s assistants don’t see it, the Spirals wreak havoc on I Do Not Know You’s disciples during the Unknowing. Keay strikes first at the choir, twisting their throats into impossible shapes until they cannot sing the Stranger’s music. Elsewhere, Crew pulls on the Vast to drop mannequins and puppets until they shatter. Shelley’s door swallows stragglers one by one and it prepares to open a way out when the time comes to detonate the explosives.

* * *

The Spiral’s assistance extends further than its firepower. In his new body, Gerry Keay comes to the Archives staff’s defense. He’s been bound to Beholding for nine years, much longer than the other Eyes here, and while his vision is blurred by the ritual around him, he can still See the marks of different Entities through the haze numbing his mind. When the sign for the Hunt has finished circling the building and the charges are set, Gerry loops his arms around an unrecognizable figure with an Eye on its forehead and leads it back to the Spiral door while it swings its axe at anything else that comes close. They collapse in the corridors, still confused, but it’s the Spiral’s brand of trickery now, not the Stranger’s. Gerry takes a moment to catch his breath next to Tim, who clearly isn’t taking the sensory overload well. Thankfully, he looks like he’s still breathing. After a few seconds, Gerry hauls himself back through the door towards the ritual. Using his Sight in this place is quickly draining his energy and someone has to tell Jon that he can start the timer.

* * *

Shelley’s grasp on the concept of time keeps slithering away, but it can feel the tension rising as the Strangers grow desperate to complete the ritual before the interlopers can stop them. Is it too late for the Circus yet? It must be. Without the choir, there cannot be a dance. From inside its door, Shelley watches the Eye called Basira recognize the other called Gerard as he points her towards the exit. She nods and runs for the door.

Gerard returns to the corridors, clutching his head. “There’s something wrong, Michael. I keep seeing signs of other Spirals out there but you’re – you’re right here.”

“That is a statement with truth in it,” Shelley agrees.

“Uh, right, then. Daisy is done prepping the explosives. Once we find Jon and he sets the ten-second timer, we can get out of here.”

The Distortion gestures to its brethren and the two other Michaels leave their scuffles and return to the safety of Shelley’s hunting grounds while Keay’s great grandson struggles to stay conscious long enough for someone to find the Archivist.

* * *

After Daisy places the charges, she takes out the Angler Fish with the Hunt’s spear, causing a haunting scream that echoes painfully in her ears. Before she can pull it back out, two figures chase her across the museum (if there _ is _still a museum around her). Abruptly she hears a creak and harsh singing and then there isn’t a floor anymore. Daisy tumbles down a set of stairs she doesn’t recognize and gets the breath knocked out of her. Then, a lid scrapes into place and blots out the only light, leaving her trapped in the dark with the Choke's song.

* * *

The only Eye still awake in Shelley’s corridors braces himself on the yellow door frame and points to where he Saw the Hunter disappear into the singing coffin. “We have to –”

“The Buried can’t stay in here,” Crew snaps as he looses a wave of vertigo. Even the other Spirals, out of sight from the once-dead Beholder, can feel a whisper on their incorporeal shapes. “It won’t end well for either of us. Leave it.”

“One of the others fell in – Daisy.”

“Then there’s nothing we can do for her. If the coffin survives the blast, then your Watcher can evaluate what to do.” Gerard starts to protest, but he can’t keep his eyes open long enough to form an argument. He sinks to the black and yellow carpet, finally too exhausted to continue.

Outside, one of the building’s supports falls close to the Distortion’s door. “It is time to leave,” Keay urges Shelley. “The Spiral has more than done its part.” Unspoken between them is the knowledge that the Spiral benefits from the Archivist’s death. If the Stranger and Eye go down together in the explosion, then neither of them will bring their rituals to fruition.

“I –” Shelley reaches for the doorknob to take them away, and then stops. “I don’t want the Archivist to die here. I want to unravel him myself when he stops being interesting.” These aren’t the Spirals thoughts, or at least not entirely. The discrepancies have been happening more and more lately where the Magnus Institute and its Archivist are concerned. 

“He does not need protecting. He is not his predecessor.”

“That is half correct. He is, indeed, not the Archivist that Michael Shelley served, but his self-preservation instincts are unusually low. The senseless little Eye needs whatever help he can get.”

Keay sighs. “The Circus doesn’t need him alive.” It doesn’t say “_so__ hurry up_”, but Shelley hears it anyway.

Shelley pulls the door shut and then twists reality. When he opens the door again, the Archivist is before him, facing the Ringmaster and looking utterly lost. It’s not much different from his normal expression.

The Ringmaster turns on Shelley. “I am _ not _happy with your god,” she informs it, hands on her hips like she’s scolding a child.

“I am sorry,” Shelley lies. Then, it continues, “I’m taking the Archivist now. I do not need him with skin, but you have his predecessor’s leftovers already and I doubt that either of their hides would survive what comes next.” The Distortion looks at the Eye’s avatar, who appears to be focusing on Shelley with an expression of bewilderment. “Press the button, Archivist.”

And he does.

* * *

Jon braces himself as he knocks on the yellow door wedged impossibly between two filing cabinets in the Archives. It edges open slightly under his touch and his heart lurches at the squeal of the hinges. He gulps, but nothing reaches out to drag him through. Tentatively, he pushes the door open further, although he’s careful not to take a step inside. “Michael? Are you there?”

“What a _riveting _question,” the Distortion says, suddenly standing on a threshold that had been empty before. Jon startles and steps back without thinking. It’s wearing the tall blond again, the one that Jon is most familiar with. “I wonder where else you think I might be if my door is here.”

“I – well, I was just double checking,” Jon blusters to cover the fact that he’d had no idea whether Michael was around. “You might have been busy.”

“My door is here,” it says again. “What was it that you wanted, Archivist?”

“I know it’s been a few days since the Unknowing, but I wanted to express everyone’s, er, appreciation.” He’s not going to tell Michael that the others had put him up to this. After they’d all taken three days to recover, Basira had pointed out that the Spiral was better as an ally than an enemy. There had apparently been plenty of damage to the wax museum even before the explosion went off. The Archives staff, of course, had unanimously voted on Jon to deliver the message. “Things would have ended much worse if you hadn’t been there.” He swallows. “It’s due to your cooperation that everyone survived. Well, sort of? Daisy is still in the coffin, but we’re working on it.” Jon winces. He can’t believe that the others voted on _ him _to make peace with a monster that could kill them in an instant. “The point is that I’m trying to say thank you.”

It blinks at him and waits. “Well, it doesn’t sound like you’re trying very hard. Are you going to say it?”

“Er, right. Thank you, Michael.” Despite being deeply suspicious of the Spiral’s motives, Jon means it. He had underestimated just how disoriented he would be during the Unknowing, and Lord knows what would have happened if they’d gone in without help. “While I have you here, I wanted to ask something. Not for a statement!” he adds hastily before it can react. “I was wondering if Helen Richardson is – I suppose ‘doing well’ isn’t the right phrase, and ‘safe’ doesn’t really apply either. Is there any of her that isn't… gone?”

Michael tilts its head back and forth in a gesture that Jon interprets as noncommittal. “Helen is still Helen, but she is also me now. She can show you herself when she finishes learning.”

“Learning?” That prompts a different thought, one which sends shivers down his spine. “Is she going to change shape like you?” He can’t imagine speaking calmly to whatever is left of Helen when it no longer looks or sounds like her.

The Distortion starts to laugh and doesn’t stop until Jon’s ears ring and his teeth clench. “That would be quite an accomplishment, though it is not impossible.” It pretends to wipe away a tear in some alien facsimile of human behavior.

Jon squints at it suspiciously. “Why is that? I’ve seen _ you _leave your door while wearing different appearances.”

Michael’s smile is all teeth and no warmth, and if Jon ever ran out of material for nightmares (which is a laughable idea, nowadays), he could add that chilling grin to the list. “I enjoy watching the Eye tie itself in knots as it tries to correctly perceive me. Don’t stop now, though, tell me more about your thoughts on –” it snickers “– _ shape changing_.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

“Of course I am.” Michael reaches out towards Jon and rests a razor-sharp finger on the bridge of his glasses, jostling them. “I thought you would have known by now that you can’t trust your eyes around me, Archivist.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on my [tumblr](http://meridiangrimm.tumblr.com/) if you want to talk about The Magnus Archives.
> 
> Just for giggles I might post a second version of this on tumblr where the names Keay, Crew, Shelley, and Salesa are all replaced with Michael (or Mikaele). I want to see how confusing and funny it is. I’ll link it here if I do it.
> 
> **Non-canon elements:**
> 
> Mike Crew is both Spiral and Vast aligned.
> 
> MAG 91 – Jon goes to see Mike, but Daisy shows up early and Jon doesn’t get his statement.
> 
> MAG 101 – Michael shows up to rescue and/or kill Jon, but because the Spiral isn’t stupid, this entity of deceit doesn’t give Jon enough truth to Know it. Michael kinda wanted to, though, which causes an existential crisis that results in Jon thinking that Michael died. Helen still ends up a Spiral.
> 
> In season 2, Martin realizes that (1) the Spiral singled out two Archive employees and they don’t know why, and (2) the Archives are getting kinda hostile because of Jon’s paranoia. He suggests a weekly team meeting so that they all have one project in common. Everyone in the Archives is wary enough of Michael that they all participate, though with varying degrees of enthusiasm. As a result, Tim finds the statement from MAG 75 (A Long Way Down) earlier than in canon.


End file.
